Consumers who wish to purchase products or services from companies often have few resources available to determine the quality of the goods or services. Some publications provide third party reviews of products and/or services. However, such surveys and reviews are based on limited experiences with the products and/or services.
In other circumstances, consumers pass on commentary by word of mouth. For example, a consumer who enjoys a particular restaurant may provide favorable commentary about the restaurant to friends. The consumer may also pass along unfavorable commentary regarding food or service of a restaurant to friends. In both of these examples, the consumer commentary is provided by word of mouth.
In another example of existing consumer commentary using a computer network, consumers often exchange commentary via chat rooms, websites that only allow consumers to register complaints using words, email, or the like. However, the use of such commentary must be tempered with the knowledge that the consumer commentary cannot be as reliable as a consumers' reaction who is willing to spend money to build a company's reputation up or down.
Therefore, it can be appreciated that there is a significant need for a system and method for a system and method to provide reliable consumer commentary in a monetary way. The present invention provides this and other advantages as will be apparent from the following detailed description and accompanying figures.